I am beginning to learn to read in a different way. So the books that I find myself opening are often no longer appearing to me from off my own shelves, or seeming to belong in rows in bookshops, libraries, or Amazon (nor even as ‘kindle’ or other forms of e-book), but as a series of bundles, which all share certain characteristics, the chief two being; that the books themselves are all essentially unfinished (unfinishable) and have not yet reached their endings, and that they are all versions of an original, upon which we are all translators (whether as writer or reader) and are continually working as mediators…
… mediators between the tension which joins together writing and doing, both the going back in an anthropological way to uncover a knowledge of the past, including our personal recollections of our recent present, or a social memory of the ‘just past’ (as Uncle Wally would have it), and our actions of going forth, in word or deed, and our agency upon the flowing forward river of time.
So the subject of the poor (This is a big bundle!) – “I can own up to being one of the poor.” – my friend ak begins a paragraph in his last post, before going on to describe the condition of his own poverty.
I might have gone first to St Matthew’s Gospel – Blessed are the poor…(Chapter V, as I recall), but it was to Henry Mayhew’s, London Labour and the London Poor (Volume 1, published in 1851… from the previously issued two-penny versions published in the Morning Chronicle) which I turned, under the title page that stated that it was: – a cyclopaedia of the conditions and earnings of –
THOSE THAT WILL WORK,
THOSE THAT CANNOT WORK, AND
THOSE THAT WILL NOT WORK.
The text begins on Page 1:
THE STREET-FOLK
Of Wandering Tribes in General.
Of the thousand of millions of human beings that are said to constitute the population of the entire globe, there are – socially, morally, and perhaps even physically considered – but two distinct and broadly marked races, viz., the wanderers and the settlers – the vagabond and the citizen – the nomadic and the civilised tribes. Between these two extremes, however…
… there is the street (etc). The text is clear and consistent throughout, although how far it is (a creative non-fiction) recomposed, it is impossible to know, and the ‘entries’, section by succeeding section, reveal the personal voices of men and women (the voices of the London Poor), often accompanied with summaries, as notes and footnotes, of the statistical evidence of the period (from The Blue Books) and other comments and references.
… and there is the nature of the writing – The present volume is the first of an intended series, the Preface states; ie, it is unfinished.
The different ‘entries’ of the poor do not write or read the same. Many, perhaps the majority, are hopeless, wishless, without expectation, and in despair, and several I found myself having to copy out, listening, as with verse, in order to mediate my own recompositions of the original; in Hebrew, the language of the Lord – Blessed; or in Pali, the language of the Buddha – Nirãsã – hopeless, and – Assadha – faithless.
That Christ and the Buddha is also the Perfected Poet, I had not considered before.